Assignment 2 – Federico Ghelli

My first experience with HoloLens was surreal. I’ve never thought I could get to the point to feel like Tony Stark in Iron Man and be able to see, move and create objects in the room I’m in.

Of course, we’re are talking about something that is at its early stages so there’s a lot of work to do, but I believe that HoloLens opens the door to something even more important than virtual reality. My first impression is overall positive. I find impressive to be able to watch videos and move computer windows across the room. However, I didn’t quite like how bulky the headset is. Maybe something in between the size of Google Glass and HoloLens would work better. Second, the hand gestures to activate different things are not as natural and I’m sure with time there will be even more to do different things, so it may get hard to remember which each gesture does.

In the field of journalism and storytelling I’ve seen that Microsoft developed a series of apps, such as Actiongram and HoloTour, that would be helpful to create engaging content. Actiongram allows the user to create videos in augmented reality, so it would be possible to use to show holograms of projects we’re working on, for example.

HoloTour, instead, is a combination of 360-degree videos, sounds and holographic scenes to recreate an area in the world in a specific time. Since I’m striving to become I travel writer, I believe that this app would give a different appeal to traveling. Virtual reality already offer the opportunity to tour different areas in the world, but HoloLens takes this experience even further, since user are able to interact with elements in the scene, all while walking around their rooms.

As a stated before, we are at the beginning but HoloLens will move a step forward into living our lives like it’s a sci-fi movie.